TIP: Improve Your Local Search Rankings With Schema Markup
Improve Your Local Search Rankings With Schema Markup
By M.J. O’Brien, 5150 Design – December 3, 2015
For many small-business owners, just the word “schema” is enough to provoke some serious head scratching, but in reality it’s not all that confusing. Simply put, schema markup is code for websites to help search engines return better results for users.
There are hundreds of schemas that can be used to provide information to search engines, but as a local business there is only one essential schema: Local Business Schema.
This code is fairly easy to implement and it’s designed to tell search engines that you’re a local business serving a local market.
Here’s how you add it to your website in three easy steps:
1) Copy this code into your favorite text editor:
<div itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/LocalBusiness”>
<p itemprop=”name”>COMPANY NAME</p>
<p itemprop=”address” itemscope itemtype=”http://schema.org/PostalAddress”>
<p itemprop=”streetAddress”>ADDRESS LINE 1</p>
<p itemprop=”addressLocality”>CITY</p>,
<p itemprop=”addressRegion”>STATE</p>
<p itemprop=”postalCode”>POSTCODE/ZIP</p.
<p itemprop=”telephone”>PHONE NUMBER</p>
</div>
2) Replace the words in bold with your company information (name, street address, city, state, zip and phone number).
3) Ask your web developer to add the code to the footer section of your website’s source code.
That’s it! You’ve just added Local Business Schema to your website and all the world knows that you are a local business!
M.J. O’Brien, owner of 5150 Design, is a habitual hiker/backpacker. Between adventures he can be found knee-deep in source code building websites for clients all over the world. You can reach him at 5150design.net.
Have questions for M.J. about schema markup? Join the discussion in the community for help.